Punchlines & Cigarettes
by Parmecia
Summary: FO3. 101 returns to her eponymous Vault and gets some news she knows is coming. One-shot.


101 was considering crawling into a hole and dying. The problem was that this place was once her home, where she'd come from, where she was fucking raised. Here, she wasn't 101. She was Erra, short for Erraline, that name she'd grown up with and always hated. Everyone in this Vault was 101, born and bred, and here she wasn't special. Well, she was, just not for what she'd hoped, and that thought sort of really pissed her off. That, and the fact that they were so damned ungrateful.

It was, perhaps, Stanley's words that had stung the worst. He was waiting down there, in the reactor level. 101--no, Erra--had taken a trip down memory lane and stumbled across where Jonas and Dad had given her that BB gun, all those years ago. It was almost good to go down there, but oh so very wrong.

Stanley spoke with such conviction. "You don't belong here anymore." The Pip-Boy 3000 on her wrist seemed awfully heavy, like when it had just been put on for the first time at her party. GNR was playing some soft-beat song that she knew that she knew well, but right now it was gibberish and so far away that the music that had kept her company all this while didn't even matter. It was like it didn't even exist.

"Erra," Amata said, her voice so sad and so regretful. "I am so sorry. You're a hero, but you have to leave..."

To be completely honest, it was exactly what she had expected. She didn't belong here, she wasn't a Vault Dweller anymore. She was a Wastelander now, she knew that, but no matter how mentally prepared she was for those words, they still cut her straight to the quick, and the wounds burned like a flamer to the face. That pathetic stare on Amata's face did not help any, either. It was one of those looks where you know that she felt guilty, but not guilty enough to not kick her out the door. One of those looks where it just made Erra's skin crawl and her trigger finger twitch.

Erra folded her arms over her chest and shifted her wait while both Thaniel and Amata stared at her, waiting for her reaction. Like two kids watching a mini-nuke in a crater, wondering if it'll blow up right in their face. They were the kids who wouldn't have been smart enough to just _fucking run._

"So lemme get this straight: I save your ass, and I _didn't_ kill your father, despite the fact that he fucked up my entire life, and you're kicking _me_ out?"

"Please understand... if you stay--"

"Yeah, no. I get it. Really, I do. I just don't fucking believe it," Erra snapped. She heaved a heavy sigh and folded. "Fine. Just gimme a minute or two to say goodbye to the place." Without waiting for Amata's response, she holed herself up in the clinic and disappeared from sight. Thaniel assumed that she was crying her eyes out. It's what he would have been doing.

So what does one say to one's traveling companion's former best friend-turned-exiler? Well, not much of anything, so Thaniel sat on some overturned locker and stared up at the girl, waiting for 101 to get out. Amata coughed, clearly uncomfortable.

"Uh... so you're traveling with Erra?" she asked finally. Thaniel rolled his eyes, a habit he'd picked up from Good Ol' 101. Stupid questions deserved nothing more, she always said.

"Yeah, I suppose. Though I don't really call her Erra..." he said, breaking 101's cardinal rule of talking about her when she wasn't in the room. Whatever, this day was fucked enough as it was.

"Has she um... found her father, by any chance?"

The irony of the situation was not lost on Thaniel. He couldn't contain his laughter, and Amata just stared at him like he was some idiot freak with four heads and twice as many arms. Once he'd calmed enough and wiped the tears from his eyes, he looked her straight in the eyes.

"Holy shit," he started, still giggling. "You really don't know jack shit, do you? Wow, man, and I thought that I had communication problems with her."

"What do you mean...?"

Thaniel was quiet for a moment, suddenly completely serious. "Her dad is fucking _dead_." The girl made a fish face as she gaped for words. She was, of course, unable to speak. "He's laying face-down in the Jefferson Memorial in a God-forsaken mess of radiation. And you just kicked her out of your Vault because of him. Good _fucking_ job, Overseer."

Erra rejoined them seconds later, her eyes completely dry and not a mark of tear stains on her cheeks. She motioned to Thaniel and held her hand out to Amata.

"Bye. I don't think we'll be seeing each other again, after all," Erra said, waiting for the other girl to take her hand. She did, but only after her mind caught up with the situation. And Erra turned without anything else, leaving the Vault and its denizens behind forever.

The 3,000-ton door closed behind her and Thaniel and not 20 seconds later, she pulled a cigarette from the beat-up carton, stuck it between her lips, and lit it. It was the first one he'd seen her take since entering the Vault. Suddenly she wasn't Erra, she was back to being Good Ol' 101, and Good Ol' 101 didn't want to put up with the bullshit of her eponymous Vault anymore. A part of her was glad that she was rid of that shit forever, but at the same time...

She knew that she would miss it. The sky overhead was dingy, not like the ceiling of the Vault. She'd forgotten how dusty and dank everything was compared to how nice the things of the Vault were kept. Her guns looked more derelict than she had remembered. Disappointment would take some getting used to again.

They had walked a while and found themselves in the relative 'safety' of some busted up military truck under a wrecked up underpass, 101's favorite haunts. Mirelurks were calm enough when they didn't notice you. Thaniel and 101 made sure to stay still enough not to attract their attention as they set up shop for the night. Their chirping was almost relaxing, but then that feeling was always broken when you realized that they could rip your head off real easy.

"Hey... 101?" he asked her quietly as she sat in the front seat, eyes closed but not yet quite asleep, but not awake either. "Can I ask you something?"

101 opened her eyes and sat up. "Yeah, I guess so. What is it?" She looked back at him and for a moment she almost seemed human.

Thaniel looked at her, this girl who was so different than the person that Amata had known, and his heart was filled with... not quite pity, because she was above his pity, but something like it. Sympathy? Maybe.

"Were you... were you going to stay in the Vault? Is that why you--why we went back?" There had been longing in her eyes while they were there.

She was quite for several minutes, and it was obvious that she was deep in thought. "I had entertained the idea for a while. I thought I could just go back. But they--" Stanley "--were right. I don't belong there anymore. I'm not... I think that I'm not who they thought I was, or who they want me to be."

No longer Erra, she meant. Thaniel wished poor Erraline a quick rest in peace and said a quick interal eulogy before smiling at Good Ol' 101.

"I don't think you ever belonged there." 101 returned the smile, not thinking.

"Sometimes I wonder." Toxic smoke plumed from the dragon's mouth as she lit Yet Another Cigarette and went back to being that familiar foul-mouthed cyborg that Thaniel'd learned to trust his back to.


End file.
